News from the Heart & Soul of San Francisco
IT’S THAT TIME of year again — Fourth of July weekend — and the Fillmore Jazz Festival is back and will take over the street for the 29th year in a row. With more than 100,000 people expected for the two-day street party, the Fillmore Jazz Festival means different things to different people. For artists,…
FILM | Barbara Kate Repa JIM TRACY, longtime running coach at the neighborhood’s University High School, never set out to be a film star. But when life conspired to deliver a record-setting team, a diagnosis of Lou Gehrig’s Disease and a community that rallied around it all, he could be no other. The result is…
SIGNALING IT WILL be harder for chain stores to open on Fillmore Street in the future, the city’s Board of Appeals on May 15 revoked the building permit secured by German-based clothing company Oska for the space at 2130 Fillmore, where it had intended to open a new boutique. Now that Oska has been adjudged…
NEW NEIGHBOR | Liz Fanlo Hair and makeup specialist Liz Fanlo lives near Fillmore and already knew she loved the neighborhood. So when she decided to open a beauty boutique, she persuaded a friend to rent her the tiniest storefront on the street at 2335 Fillmore. “Isn’t it cute?” she beams. “It’s tiny — 50…
NEW NEIGHBOR | ELITE FINE JEWELRY A dream of a new jewelry store is now open in the neighborhood. But it began as a nightmare. Jeweler Simon Khurin and his family lived only 80 miles from Chernobyl when the Russian nuclear reactor imploded in 1986, spewing radiation across the landscape and forcing the relocation of…
IT’S AN ICON in the neighborhood, with its Gothic arches, soaring tower and flying buttresses. St. Dominic’s Catholic Church has stood proudly at the corner of Steiner and Bush Streets since 1928, when the stone sanctuary replaced an earlier brick building destroyed by the 1906 earthquake. For nearly two decades — an unusually long time…
AN APPRECIATION | Elizabeth Pepin Silva IN MAY 2013 the Fillmore lost a special man with the passing of Reggie Pettus, 73, longtime proprietor of the New Chicago Barbershop and unofficial archivist of the area. Reggie moved to the Fillmore District from his home in Mobile, Alabama, in 1958 to attend City College of San…
AT ITS REGULAR monthly meeting tonight, the Board of Appeals ruled that Oska, the German clothing line, is a chain store and must comply with the city’s formula retail ordinance before it can proceed with plans to open at 2130 Fillmore Street, formerly the home of Jet Mail. EARLIER: Oska stirs chain store fight on…
By Gary Kamiya San Francisco Chronicle FEW PEOPLE who pass the violet-painted house at 1712 Fillmore Street give it a second look. It’s another Victorian in a city full of them. But this building is different. Perhaps no other structure in San Francisco has such an extraordinary story. If its walls could talk, they would…
IT’S A BIT of a ’tween time at the Fillmore Farmers Market. Winter’s larder of sweet potatoes and oranges is still filled to abundance, the spring asparagus has just arrived, but the full bounty of summer tomatoes and melons is yet to come. Nonetheless, on a sunny Saturday morning in late April, there is no…